Re: [New-Poetry] Re: POL: Prevent the “Artistic”Death of Another Innocent Animal

[Anny Ballardini]

I haven't eaten meat for about 15-20 years now, nor fish, lately not even eggs. I do eat cheese. I am not a vegan, because I do not have time to cook and my life gives me time enough for a sandwich and cheese is a good nourishment and helps me get through. 
Mine was a choice. I realized that meat were animals when I first arrived in Italy from New York. I was ten. Those little rabbits were what we ate. I did not want to believe it, as I did not want to believe so many things. They forced me to eat, up to when I could do what I wanted. 
I anyhow wear leather shoes, woolen sweaters, and who says that plants do not have a soul? 

I think we should talk about this more, and keep more in mind what kind of disasters we, the humans, have succeeded in doing to this earth.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: amy king 
  To: UB Poetics discussion group ; NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views 
  Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008 10:21 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POL: Prevent the “Artistic”Death of Another Innocent Animal


  Mark,

  You're right -- the treatment of animals and for what purposes is not so black and white.  I too never assumed so.  In fact, I've struggled with the issue on a personal level, often hypocritically, for years.  I eat seafood as though those living beings don't have feelings.  I've been sick as of late and have turned to chicken soup, something I haven't eaten since 1990.  I buy kosher and organic whenever possible.  I cross my fingers and hope that promise that the animals were given food and treated humanely is true.  I don't condemn people who eat animals or wear their by-products; I'd walk around angry all the time, especially at myself.  Eliminating the products of animals from our lives seems next to impossible.  

  But when folks get bogged down or distracted by an "It's art" claim when it comes to issues of accountability (usually to shirk accountability), most especially by people such as artists who are making a public statement using animals, the territory gets dangerous.  These "artists" try to set the terms and evade the ethical questions, as Vargas has done.   He treated the dog in terms he won't acknowledge for "the greater good" of other starving dogs.  Great.   He brought attention to those dogs?  There was no other way than to seemingly abuse one of them?  Somehow I don't imagine that all of the other citizens of Costa Rica sit around idly ignoring what I'm sure is dubbed the starving dog problem.  Certainly there are organizations he could produce a campaign for. He could speak out, contribute time, use his public persona to recruit attention and volunteers, any number of other efforts I can't imagine at the moment.  Instead, the outrage he produced has instead focused on his dubious treatment of one dog, rightfully so, instead of the cause he claims to have exhibited a starving dog for.  How effective was his "piece" in its goal?  Could he have been more effective?  

  Those who consider the ethical before the supposed artistic "gains" are dismissed with a variety of reasons, mostly ones that implicate they are not sophisticated enough to understand the artist's aesthetics.  We are then supposed to feel less-then-intellectual and quiet down in embarrassment.   Some of these "aesthetics" have managed to erase the ethical and lead to thinking like eugenics (Yeats, Eliot) and even the advancement of the Holocaust.  Wasn't Hitler, after all, trying to make things better?   Some have called him an artist.  Didn't he sell that vision?  The art produced under his regime, especially that of Riefenstahl's and her ground-breaking aesthetics, cost many lives and much torture.  

  Now without the shock value, where would Vargas be?  Would he be a decent artist?  Would he be noticed?  Aren't art and aesthetics about much more than finding the next shock value boundary?  

  On another note and for those folks who are interested in the treatment of animals, most especially ourselves, I just started reading what already seems like a brilliant new book by Barbara Kingsolver, ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL:  http://www.kingsolver.com/bookshelf/miracle.asp

  And a review:  

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